


Glowing

by The_Falling_Star



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angel Wings, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Good W. D. Gaster, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Past Abuse, Reader is male, Reader is named, Scientist W. D. Gaster, Undertale Monsters on the Surface
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:04:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27110119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Falling_Star/pseuds/The_Falling_Star
Summary: Some nights seem gateways to other worlds, where there's a spell cast by the wind and written in moonlight, where it’s just you and him, and a possibility you’d once thought unimaginable.
Relationships: W. D. Gaster/Original Character(s), W. D. Gaster/Reader
Comments: 9
Kudos: 17





	Glowing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [chaoticbibastard](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaoticbibastard/gifts).



> This is a gift fic/collab with the amazing chaoticbibastard whose art inspired me to write. It stars his OC who is (coincidentally) also named Alex. This character is a nephilim, and I have a huge weakness for things with wings (and we both have a weakness for Gaster).

_And I know how it feels to the hands_

_Heavy as the heavens_

_A weight that could fold you_

_to keep holding_

  
  


* * *

  
  


The oak tree is old. 

Old, old, old, its ancient roots diving deep into the ground and its twisting limbs soaring high into the air. Its bark is weathered and scarred, and the way it’s hundreds of leaves rustle in the night breeze, you feel it has a thousand stories to tell.

One thick branch, almost the size of your torso, hangs particularly low, jutting out from the main trunk nearly horizontally for a short distance before sweeping upwards to the heavens. You’re laid out along it, crimson wings draping down on either side, golden eyes staring up to the obscured skies. The canopy is enormous, a dome of wooden limbs and green leaves that surround you on every side, blocking out most of your view of the outside world. Only occasionally does the light of the full moon make it past all the foliage, shards of bright silver cast down from overhead, glinting like diamonds over your skin.

The flicker of light over your arm draws your attention back down to it. Your skin is dotted with freckles and, much like the sprawling branches overhead, crisscrossed and bisected every which way by dozens of scars. The whole of your body is littered with them. The raised flesh of pale pink contrasts all the more sharply in the splinters of moonlight.

You slowly run your fingers along them, thumb tracing over a particularly prominent scar around the circumference of your wrist. It doesn’t bother you most days to have them bared for all the world to see. They show what strength you are capable of, how much you can endure to protect all that’s worth protecting in the worlds. But some days (or nights, in this instance) they are a visceral reminder of that pain. Agony inscribed into your very skin, a written record of all that was done to you.

Sometimes you just need to step away. A place to just lay with old gnarled wood at your back to just _be._ Where the past and the world outside almost cease to matter, and all is reduced to dancing leaves and moonlight.

“This seems an odd roost for an angel.” drawls a deep, smooth voice just below you, startling you from your reminiscing. You yelp, nearly unseating yourself from the branch as you rush to sit up and quickly glance down to see your favorite tall, handsome skeletal monster peering back up at you, one hand tucked into a pocket, his skull tilted slightly to one side. For some dumb reason you have a half-baked idea to hide the arm you were just fixedly examining behind your back, realize halfway through the motion how stupid that is, and instead awkwardly cross your arms like you meant to do that the whole time.

“H-hey, Dings!” you manage, trying to steady your voice.

“Good evening,” he replied, lips curling with the slightest hint of an amused smirk, “What are you doing up there, my dear?”

“Er. Star gazing...?” you jump on the first idea to come to mind.

“....Star gazing. Under a canopy of leaves? That must be a terrible view.” he takes a step closer and lifts a long arm up towards you, hollow hand outstretched, “Well then, help me up.”

“What.” you blankly respond.

“I’d like to see just how terrible the view is.” his lithe fingers curl twice in an _‘on with it’_ gesture, and you reach down to clasp your arm around his forearm, as he does much the same to you. The grasp is familiar, having pulled each other up countless times off a sparring mat, knowing well how to shift your weight and move your body in time with his. With a coordinated hop from him and a tug from you, he’s up on the branch and seated beside you.

He hums as he glances about at the wide branches looking...ungainly almost. It’s an odd look for him, you know he has excellent balance. You have the feeling he did not spend much of his childhood doing things like climbing trees, his posture making him look a little out of place as he sits next to you. 

“Well doc, how’s the view?” you ask as you idly kick your legs back and forth while he’s quiet for a spell.

His eyelights shift over to you for but a moment, “Fascinating, as always.”

_...Wait, did he mean?--_

He had fallen silent again during your delayed mental sputtering, and another errant breeze rustles the leaves, like countless voices whispering. “I do rather enjoy that.” he quietly adds over the sound, pointing upwards with a pale finger. You cock a brow in confusion. 

“Wind,” he supplies, “Besides a few locations between Hotlands and Waterfall, the air did not move around much in the Underground. As there was no sun to warm the air and as most areas were thermally very stable, it was rare to have the differences in densities required to generate wind, especially so in regions that did contain trees, Snowdin in particular. It was always quite stagnant.”

The corners of his lips dip down ever so slightly into a mild frown as his voice lowers, “That may have been the most apt descriptor of the Underground. _Stagnant._ The Surface is so wonderfully chaotic in contrast. So many unexpected occurrences...” his eyelights have drifted back to you, catching your golden eyes with some unfathomable look you cannot place.

“Ah, but here I am waxing poetic, interrupting your _gazing_.” he says with a little chuckle, in spite of himself. He looks a touch more serious as he asks; “Am I interrupting?”

_Never, I could listen to you talk forever,_ is what you _would_ say, but instead you reign it in to a ~~less desperate~~ more restrained, “It’s fine, I don’t mind,” you scratched the back of your head, “Hey, so, shocker, I _might_ have been lying about star gazing.”

“Inconceivable.” he flatly replies, but the quirk of his mouth confesses he isn’t mad (or surprised). This is merely your dance, the game the two of you play, where you hide behind half-truths and he pretends to not know you well enough to see past them.

“I know, right?” you force a laugh, the wooden sound fading out quickly, “Yeah, uh, I was...”

Golden eyes drift back down to your arm, the one he’d held onto just a moment ago, “...Remembering.” you murmured. You don’t have to look up, you can _feel_ his eyelights on you. 

“Remembering what?” he asks quietly. There is no teasing in his tone, it’s sober, softer and lined with quiet concern now.

You hesitate a moment before meeting his gaze. His eye sockets are dark, an abyssal black as dark as the void but within them his eyelights are bright. Miniature stars that are trained on you, hanging on your words.

“Bad shit.” you finally reply, “The really, really bad shit, Dings.”

You don’t think it’s done on purpose, as fleeting at the look is, but his eyelights drop down to your neck. There is a scar, a level line that perfectly encircles your throat. He’s staring at that ring around your neck with indignant _loathing._ Indignant at what was done to you.

But as quickly as it’s come, it’s gone, and his eyelights have drifted lower, down to the arm you’d been examining earlier. 

“May I?” he slowly reaches for your arm, pale fingers stopping just short of touching you.

“Knock yourself out.” you hold out your marred limb towards him.

He starts closer to your elbow. His fingers are unyielding against the skin of your forearm as they make contact, but his fingertips feel nearly soft as silk, his touch unimaginably gentle. He skims down, moving towards your hand, outlining each mark along the way. It is a long, detailed journey, one that makes your breath quicken. The tracing of his fingers eventually outline the sensitive skin of your inner wrist causing a tremor to run down your spine, down your wings, through every feather, the quaking crimson plumage rustling softly just like the leaves above. 

“Is this alright, darling?” he asks, his voice deep and low, just above a whisper. And the lilt of it, the way the last syllable rolls off his tongue, there is something so _alluring_ about it you can feel your stomach attempting backflips inside you.

“Y--” you have to swallow heavily because the word gets tangled up in your throat, “Yes.”

He’s smiling as his fingers skim up your wrists, over your palm until, like some inevitable end, they intertwine with yours. He gives your hand a gentle, reassuring squeeze, and you return it. His shoulders loosen at that, the movement so minute you almost didn’t catch it.

“You do know,” he starts, and his words aren’t quite as steady as they should be, just like he is up here in this perch, “You’re more than welcome to your reminiscing in isolation, but there isn’t a need to subject yourself to exile. You are not alone.” His eyelights gaze up at you again as the night breeze picks up again, “Not if you don’t want to be.” Shards of moonlight dance over his pale face and it is breathtaking how the sliver light plays against his features.

And _his_ scars.

A black line cutting down from his left eye, another jagged fissure climbing up his skull from the right like some desiccated, midnight vine. 

A familiar pang of guilt cuts into your very SOUL. The same being that carved you apart returned to reclaim her prize. Gaster’s intervention saved you, yet nearly killed him. Somehow, miraculously, (foolishly) someone decided to protect _you,_ for once, and the cost of that decision was plainer to see on him than even your old wounds. 

The thought of risking something like that ever occurring again had caused you to flee.

It was one of the greatest regrets of your life.

Because you think you hurt him more doing that than any physical injury could.

“Alexander,” his voice is harder than it had been all night, tone almost warning as he reads the guilt in your eyes.

“Yeah, I know, I was an idiot for leaving, I’m sorry-”

“That isn’t what I was going to say,” he cuts in, his hand squeezing yours again, “That is long forgiven.” his other hand not holding yours reached out to your neck, trailing along the scar with a feather-light touch where it cuts across your throat, and your breathing ceases completely, “I never regretted defending you. Not when the alternative was losing you.”

His fingers glide up the side of your neck, up until he’s cupping your cheek, the burning, glowing stars of his eyes meeting your gold. And you’re staring back, unblinking because there is no way in hell you can tear your gaze away for even that split second. You’re not sure who moves first, which of you leans forward, but it scarcely matters; you’re both responsive in a way only years of reacting to each other’s movements could hone, pulled together by some force of gravity.

His lips press to yours, fingers curling around your jaw. It’s nearly an electric tingle you can feel as you kiss him back, the brush and caress playing off one another until it seems your nerves are coursing with sparks. And there's this delightful little noise he makes, not quite a hum and not quite a groan, some pleased vocalization that escapes his lips and mingles into the kiss and you could listen to that fucking sound every damn day of your life.

And he’s kissing you like he wants to taste you for the rest of his.

He leans in, pressing a little more aggressively and you would _so_ welcome it, except the movement throws you off balance and you’re leaning precariously back. In response he grabs at your hip to steady you, overcompensating, and you extend out your right wing to offset the weight shift. There’s a half-second when you’re sure you’ll both tumble down but somehow you both manage to keep your balance. It’s a very near thing.

When a moment passes and it’s clear you’re not about to fall and bust your asses on the ground, you both burst out laughing at the same time at the ridiculousness of it all, your limbs tangled and clinging to each other. 

“Perhaps it might be better to continue this at home?” he asks as he’s regained most of his composure, “If you. Would like to continue, that is.” 

There’s a long moment where you both...hesitate to meet the other's gaze. Your heart is in your throat, and it would be _oh so easy_ to push him away, to deny yourself and hide, that most destructive among your habits. But you meet his eyes, force yourself to look, actually look, and you see the delicate hope in them. 

(You wouldn’t just be denying yourself, would you?)

“Fuck yeah.” you murmur, and he chuckles a bit to cover his breath of relief, grabbing at your waist again. The hairs on the back of your neck stand on end and you realize he is about to teleport when you speak up, “Wait.”

His grip loosens, looking at you curiously. 

You’re a little confused yourself, trying to sort out why you need to stay. There’s a spell here, in this moment, with moonlight and cool night air through feathers and rustling leaves and weathered bark and you want just another minute of it before it’s gone forever.

“Just a minute,” you say out loud, “I wasn’t done stargazing yet.”

“Of course.” he says indulgently, carefully shifting so that he’s leaned against you, your hands woven together still. You stretch your left wing out, pressing it to his back and wrapping around him, able to feel his soft sigh as your head leans against his shoulder.

Above you, the oak tree’s branches ascend ever higher, on and on, ancient yet still growing.

  
  


* * *

  
  


_A moon of light reflecting fully_

_And I guess it would feel like rebirth_

_Out of some kind of dying_

_to see yourself so glowing_

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> The title of this fic and lyrics are from [Glowing by The Oh Hellos](https://youtu.be/RubfUSCC6Yw)
> 
> \---
> 
> Oak trees are old, enduring symbols of strength. I felt like it was an appropriate setting here. 
> 
> [Tumblr](https://fallingstarstuff.tumblr.com/) where you can find a posting schedule.
> 
> If you are a fan or writer of Gaster fics, please consider joining us over at the [Gaster's Followers Discord server.](https://fallingstarstuff.tumblr.com/post/639586244700127232/gasters-followers-discord-server)
> 
> 💙 Stay safe, and stay DETERMINED. ❤️


End file.
